Wall St jumps on Bernanke relief

By IBT Staff Reporter On 06/25/09 AT 1:00 PM

U.S. stocks rallied on Thursday on investors' relief that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke was weathering a tough grilling in Congress relatively well.

Consumer discretionary shares had led stocks higher from early in the session, on positive news from the retail and home-building sectors that triggered a rally in the shares of home builder Lennar Corp and retailer Bed, Bath & Beyond .

The U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee questioned Bernanke on the Fed's role in Bank of America's takeover of Merrill Lynch, and whether he pressured BofA's CEO Ken Lewis to go through with the deal after Lewis raised objections.

There could have been a little apprehension ahead of this that Bernanke truly was in on forcing Bank of America (to buy Merrill), but that seems to have been blown a little out of proportion, said Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Nothing out of the ordinary is being reported so we're getting a relief rally.

Another bright spot among retailers was J.C. Penney Co Inc , up 6.1 percent at $28.223 after JPMorgan raised its rating on the stock to overweight from neutral.

The S&P retail index shot up 3.4 percent.

The broad S&P 500 has climbed as much as 40 percent from March's 12-year closing low on hopes the economy was stabilizing, but jitters over the strength of a potential recovery have stalled the rally recently. The S&P 500 is up about 36 percent from that trough.

Exclusive articles delivered to your inbox daily.

A year and a half after the Panama Papers leak hit headlines across the globe, the country's finance minister sat down with IBT to discuss what his department has been doing since then to clean up Panama's reputation on the world stage and keep the use of secretive tax havens in check.